I try very hard not to get political in these little missives of mine, but I’m having more and more trouble understanding the deep rift between sides in the “Gun Issue.” Let me first state that a) I know how to shoot a gun. I was raised on a farm and taught early; and b) I do not own a gun, nor do I want one. That is not any kind of edict against guns themselves: I just have no…

I’ll be the first to admit that I am not the most disciplined guy in the world. It’s not my fault: there are just too many things that I want to do, and they’re constantly interfering with the things I need to do. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. People accuse me of having ADHD; happens all the time, but I’m not sure. I’m not the sort that gets completely distracted at every new shiny object, nor do…

Sometimes, the biggest problem with living in San Francisco is the people who DON’T live in San Francisco. I’m sure that’s true with most places that considered ideal vacation destinations; if all the tourists in Orlando at any given time decided to work together, they could stage a coup and overthrow the local government just from sheer numbers. And don’t get me started on Branson, Missouri … you could populate a small country with the amount of people there at the…

This is not a political site, and I am not an overly political guy. I’m not about to make any blanket statements about the Affordable Care Act being the greatest thing since sliced bread, nor about how heartless the GOP is being about this whole thing (you can decide that for yourself). But I do believe that some form of universal health care is important, and that importance goes beyond simple dollars and cents. Now some of you will read…

My nephew Ernie was showing off his new Echo last weekend. For those of you who’ve been living under a rock or something for the last decade, Amazon’s Echo is the physical conduit for Alexa, their voice-controlled personal assistant. It’s roughly the size of a tall boy and contains Wi-Fi, a couple of speakers, and seven (I don’t know, either) microphones. It’s connected to “the cloud” and sits in your home, plugged into the wall, waiting quietly for recognition ……

I’m an open-minded kind of guy (whether that is the “reason for” or the “result of” studying philosophy years ago, I’ll let you decide). But I’m also a guy who’s ever-so-slightly terrified by what I see happening to public healthcare. I, personally, have insurance, but I’ve got plenty of friends who have been dropped or who have seen their rates skyrocket, and frankly, it makes me nervous. So I’ve been trying to use the aforementioned open mind to find pathways…

OK, to be fair, not everything on this list qualifies as stupid. But what IS stupid is that I’m paying for stuff I don’t have to. My friend Chance mentioned something about it this weekend, and it got me thinking. None of these are bills that will bankrupt me, but put together, they represent a good chunk of change that I don’t have to be spending. Checking account This was seriously the first thing to go. I do almost all…

Two weeks ago, I was helping a buddy pack up his apartment as he was preparing to move from his 2B2B into a much smaller studio apartment that is closer to his work. This means that those college essentials like the beer pong table and bean bag chairs weren’t going to make the move, so we started a pile of stuff to donate to charity. We were working on packing up his closet when he discovered a purse that he…

A friend of mine recently got a job offer out of state and a two week notice to move everything that she owns to a whole new city. This would seem terrifying if she wasn’t such an optimistic person. Instead of frantically packing and tying lose ends together she wants to enjoy the two weeks while spending as little money as possible. We are only two days in, but we have only spent three dollars apiece and gas. Day One…

Running a household may seem like a fun way to wear an apron and host dinner parties, but what never gets reported is the daily phenomenon that happens in our own homes. The same items always go missing, there is an abundance of what we don’t need, and it’s so predictable that we know it’s going to happen before it ever does. Let’s talk about a few of these occurrences. In my house there are always missing socks. The smaller…